Elliot Morelli
I’m losing control.
The thought echoes through my head, undulled by champagne or lust. January kneels on the table, naked and covered in sweat and whatever Doc and Bobby have left on her but she looks exquisite. More stunning than she did in silk and rubies. It’s the look on her face, the defiant tilt of her chin. She knows her power now. I could see it as she fucked my brothers, her mind expanding to take in new pleasure and exude new strength. She shifts closer to the edge of the table, but she doesn’t get down. She doesn’t obey. It makes me want to hurt her. To take her so roughly she’s left wearing my bruises like jewels.
“Come, Miss Whitehall,” I repeat. “Come and I won’t punish you.”
She stares at me with her luminous green eyes. She doesn’t move.
Doc loops his hands around her stomach. “Don’t you dare give in, Tits.”
“Let go,” I say. “She’s not yours.”
“She’s not yours either, Morelli.”
January pushes Doc’s restraining hands from her belly. “It’s okay. I want to go to Eli.”
“Is this… are you choosing him?” Doc asks.
The question makes my heart stop, but January shakes her head. “I want to belong to all of you. I want to live here and cook and work in a café as a barista.”
“Sweet.” Doc collapses back onto the table. “Hand me the JB, Basher.”
I glare at him. “Get dressed and leave. That’s an order. And you,” I point my Dom Pérignon bottle at January. “No woman of mine is going to work, least of all in food service.”
She tosses her shiny hair over her shoulder. “Then I can’t be yours, at least not the way you want me to be.”
“You’re wrong,” I tell her. “You’ll be exactly what I want you to be.”
She stands. The face of an angel, a body bred for sin. “I think that you’ve wanted someone like me for a long time, Eli. Someone to challenge you. Someone to share with the men you love.”
I have wanted someone like her. I do want someone like her. I want her to sit at the swirling center of Velvet House and make all of our miserable lives better. But I don’t like the way she commanded me to apologize to Adriano. As though she were the one with all the power.
“What I want is obedience,” I tell January. “That is the only thing I enjoy in a woman.”
She smiles. “Our history says you enjoy me more.”
It’s a statement so arrogant, it makes my blood boil. I can’t think of a retort. I drop into one of the velvet backed dining chairs and drink from the neck of my champagne. I will the alcohol to bring oblivion and free me from this situation.
“Enough,” I tell her. “You’ve made your point. Leave with Doc and Bobby. I want to be alone.”
Doc, now swigging from a bottle of JB, nudges January with his foot. “Go work your magic on him, Tesorina.”
January slides her legs off the table. “Is it okay if I touch you, Elliot?”
I despise that name, and as she stands in defiance of me, I despise January Whitehall. Ten seconds ago she was getting the life fucked out of her and now she looks like snow wouldn’t melt in her mouth. She’s exploiting us with her body, with her innocence. Her virginity is gone, but she remains as pure as she’s ever been and that feels like a curse. Like she’s taunting me.
“You may not touch me,” I tell her.
Her face falls and I feel a stab of something irrational, but something softer, too. “You can go to the bar and get me another bottle of Dom Pérignon,” I say.
She goes meekly, returning with a fresh green bottle. “Here you go, Mr. Morelli.”
When I take it from her, she drops to her knees on the floor before me. “Mr. Morelli, can you please touch me?”
I stare at her full breasts, her crimson lips. The excessiveness of her and the simplicity.
“No.”
I peel the foil away from the bottleneck. Alcohol is what I need. Alcohol and cigarettes, if Doc has any.
January tilts her head, staring at the front of my suit pants. My cock surges against my leg, betraying me.
“I think you want to play, Eli.”
“That’s because you’re a disobedient little slut.”
She smiles up at me, the picture of virtue. “I’m sorry, daddy.”
The air around me crackles. She said it again. The word that should only come out of her mouth while I’m fucking her into oblivion. “What did you just call me?”
“Daddy. Isn’t that what you want to be?”
I delicately place the champagne bottle on the floor. “Say it again?”
Her eyes widen. She’s scared and she should be. “D-daddy?”
I grab her by the hair, pulling it tight. The word thrums through me like a current. She called me daddy. Not sweetly as she should have done, but like a spoiled bitch. I’ll show her daddy.
I drag her, gasping, to the edge of the table. Doc rolls out of the way as I bend January over so her round backside faces me. “Say it again.”
I expect her to cry, beg, but she just shakes her thighs so her ass bounces. “Daddy, everything between my legs hurts. Won’t you make it better?”
Bobby gives a low moan.
“Yeah, this is fucked,” Doc says, getting up and settling on Bobby’s right side. “If you’re not gonna do her, Morelli, get out of the way. We’ll tear the girl up for you.”
I pull January’s hair. “No. She’s mine.”
“Yeah, for now. Then she’ll be mine. Then she’ll be Bobby’s, then she’ll be yours again. That’s how sharing works.”
I ignore Doc and focus on the porcelain curve of January’s spine. She looks back at me and I see hunger in her eyes. But there’s something else, too. A softness that almost floors me. After everything I’ve done to her, she still has a heart for me. I let go of her hair, my muscles trembling.
“What?” she asks. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I say, feeling the energy drain from my body. “You drive me utterly insane.”
She turns and takes me in her arms like a child. “I’m sorry.”
My hands and feet tingle. Am I having a heart attack? “Let go.”
“No.” She hugs me tighter. “You know I’ve never seen you less than fully dressed.”
Because I never want to be. If I could fuck in a suit and not be labeled as a freak, I would. The champagne seems to be catching up with me, coating my brain in a low fuzz.
January’s hand creeps to touch my tie. “Can I undo this?”
I say nothing, but I let her pull open the knot and slip the silk from around my neck. She drops the tie to the floor and starts on my shirt buttons. Soon I’m naked from the waist up. January runs her hands over my stomach. “You shouldn’t hide your body.”
“I’m not hiding anything.”
Her mouth twists, but her touch is gentle. I let her continue stroking me, closing my eyes. It’s been a long day. A long life. The feel of her against my skin is a release from all of it.
“Eli,” she says quietly. “Can you please just say you would have taken me to the hospital like Adriano?”
My abdomen tenses under her palm. “No.”
“But I know you would have. When I was locked in the East Wing you didn’t even come and take your necklace.”
“That’s because you were born to wear my rubies.”
Her smile mixes with the alcohol in my blood and makes everything glow for one seamless instant. Then it fades. I sigh. “Why does everything have to be so difficult, bella?”
“I don’t know,” she says, stroking my hip muscle. “But if you admit you would have helped me, I’ll make love to you.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes. And I’ve had practice now. I might be good at it.”
A chuckle from beside us. “She’s better than good at it,” Bobby says.
“Can confirm,” Doc agrees.
I feel a sudden rush of affection for the pair of them. These men with whom I’ve unwittingly shared a life. “Are the two of you going to hold it against me forever if I bow to this brat?”
“I mean… I did it,” Doc says. “So it’d be pretty hypocritical of me.”
“Yeah,” Bobby agrees. “I can’t pretend like I’m better…”
“…so, I don’t think we’ll bring it up,” Doc finishes. “Get a move on, Morelli. I want another turn.”
I laugh. It just tumbles out of me the way it did when I was younger. Light and loose.
“Thank you both.” I touch a hand to January’s cheek. “Are you really ready, bella?”
She nods so I bend to her ear. “I wouldn’t have taken you to see your Zia.”
January rears back in shock but I slide my hands around her waist, keeping her close. “I would have paid to have your Zia medevacked to a hospital in New Jersey where I could have taken you, saving her life and protecting yours at the same time.”
January lets out a slow breath. “You mean it?”
“Yes,” I say stiffly, praying she doesn’t want more. If she does, Christ knows what I’ll do. Fall to my knees and give her every dollar to my name? Swear to take my life if she’s ever unhappy? But January’s fingers are already on my belt, unbuckling and pulling away the leather.
“Thank you, Mr. Morelli.”
“And now you’re all polite again…”
She offers me a soft smile. “I feel things for you. I have ever since I first saw you.”
The lightness in her voice, her uncertainty, it makes me want to be honest. “I am… bound to you, bella. In a way I’ve never been bound to a woman before. I dislike it with every fiber of my existence.”
She giggles.
“Do not laugh at me.”
But she only giggles harder. “Sorry, I just love it when you’re grumpy.”
I grip her chin, lifting her face to mine. “Is that right?”
“Yes.” Her cheeks go pink. “Can you make love to me now?”
“And now you’re shy again,” I say with a smirk. “How delightful for me.”
I turn her onto the table, pushing her back so that her ass is presented to me. I can see a little of her pussy, but not enough. “Spread your knees.”
She obeys and I stare at the pink slit between her legs, my cock swelling inside my briefs. I swat her pretty ass. “Say it again.”
“Daddy.” She lifts her hips higher. “Please take me?”
I touch her instead, brushing my fingers over the soaked folds and ruffles that I have been obsessed with since I first saw them.
“Look at this,” I tell no one in particular. “This is the girl kept pure all her life, fucked twice and still dripping all over my hand.”
January gives a pitiful moan. “Sorry, daddy.”
I inhale the phrase like Amyl. If I live to be two hundred, I’ll never hear anything so good. “Do you think you fooled anyone with your chastity? You’re a born slut, Miss Whitehall. Meant to be here, bent over and servicing me and my men.”
I swat her backside. “Did you like losing your cherry in front of me?”
“I… I don’t know.”
She knows, she’s just embarrassed. I press her face into the tabletop. “I know you liked it, just like I know Doc stuck it in your asshole during your little road trip.”
January gasps. “He—”
“Didn’t tell me,” I say, at the same time Doc shouts, “I didn’t tell him, Tesorina!”
“He didn’t have to,” I continue. “I know everything, bella. Every thought you’ve ever had, every desire that’s gone through your mind. Do you understand?”
She nods, her cheek rubbing against the table.
“Good.” I unzip my suit pants, shove down my briefs. My heavy cock falls onto January’s backside and she trembles. I give her ass another slap. “Now that you know you have my respect, I plan to be disrespectful to you for a very…” I press my cock to her entrance, “…long…” she cries as I thrust inside her pussy, “…time …”
My pleasure spikes as her walls close around me. The others weren’t exaggerating, she’s as sweet as sugar and tight as a lock. More than any man could hope for. And as much as I wanted her virginity, I’m glad she’s broken in. I’m in no mood to play nice.
I slam inside her, savaging her as she screams. I hold her hips so she can’t move, trying and failing to savor this first taste.
“Eli,” she breathes. “Eli, that feels so good.”
I grit my teeth. With every thrust she seems to grow tighter. How did my brothers pull out of her? Climax is already upon me. I distract myself by spanking her. It’s as hard as I’ve ever hit any woman, but January just pushes back on my cock, begging for more. Barely clinging to my load, I grip her hair. “You like pain, don’t you, bella?”
She shakes her head but her cunt pulses around me.
“Gesù Cristo, Santo Dio.” Jesus Christ, God in heaven.
“Yeah,” Doc calls. “You get that.”
I pull January up by her hair so Doc and Bobby can see her tits as I pound her tight little cunt. The blood I saw on Doc’s fingers is now smeared all over my shaft and the sight of it only sharpens my arousal.
“Call me daddy, bella. Call me daddy while I fuck your cunt.”
“Daddy,” she wails. “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!”
Her pussy flutters around me. She’s close. Very close. “Beg me to make you come.”
January’s eyes are glazed, her mouth half-open.
“Beg or I’ll pull out and leave you hungry.”
Her gaze flicks to Doc and Bobby. I laugh. “That’s how you think it’ll be? I turn you down, you go to one of them?”
I wrap her hair tighter around my fist. “Beg or I will pull out of your luscious pussy and lock you in that cage downstairs and this time my men will not help you. They’ll pull their cocks out and make you suck them through the bars instead.”
January gives a high whine. “No!”
I stop moving, my cock speared deep inside her. She gives a desperate sob, grinding up against me, trying to get more stimulation.
“Say, ‘please make me come, daddy.’”
“Please make me come, daddy,” she mumbles, still trying to pump herself on my cock.
“Again.”
She repeats the words, voice quivering with shame. This girl is mine. As long as I’m alive, she’ll cower in front of me, equally humiliated and excited. “You’re going to get what you want, Miss Whitehall, just open those pretty lips for me.”
She complies, and I grip her jaw and spit into her mouth.
The shock on her face, the absolute horror, spurs me to action. I fuck her roughly as she wails, her magic cunt rippling around me. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!”
I don’t know who she’s apologizing to, possibly God for being so unchaste, but I don’t care. She comes with a violent scream, struggling hard against my cock. I keep fucking her until she falls, half-conscious, onto the table then I spank her again, leaving a blistering red mark on her backside. “Say ‘thank you, daddy.’”
“Thank you, daddy…”
“Good girl.” I clutch her hips, honing in on my own orgasm. “Tonight, I’m going to finish all over you, but soon you’ll take all of my cum and give me a child.”
January gives a low moan and the thought of it—this goddess round with my child—brings me to the edge. I tear myself from her clinging pussy and ejaculate on her ass. She lets out a squeak of surprise but holds still as I finish coming all over her. When I’m done, I stroke her hair and rub the back of her sweat-soaked neck.
“Good girl,” I croon. “I’m so proud of you. You’ve done so well.”
“So, you’re not hurting her,” a gravelly voice says.
I turn. Adriano is leaning up against the doorway, his arms folded across his chest.
I inhale, fresh oxygen cutting through the fog in my head. “What are you doing here?”
“Watching.”
January buries her face in her hands, but Doc laughs. “Bigfoot’s returned! What’s up, Adri?”
Adriano doesn’t look at him, his gaze is still on January. His green eyes are impossible to read in the semi-darkness. I tuck away my cock, then pick up another cloth napkin. “We’re not hurting her, Rossi. What’s your concern?”
Adriano takes a step into the dining room and watches me swipe the cum from January’s skin. His expression is easy to read. Pure, slack lust. He wants to fuck her and as always, he hates himself for wanting to fuck her.
“Adriano,” Bobby says quietly. “Is everything good?”
Adriano shakes his head like he’s flicking off a fly. “I thought she’d come storming up here and start… it doesn’t matter.”
Doc stretches, still naked and entirely comfortable. “Well since you’re here, Adriano, pull up a chair. Grab a drink.”
He makes an angry bull noise, and his gaze drops to January’s face. She’s peeking at him from between her fingers, and her cheeks are red. A throb goes through my cock. Somehow, after all we’ve done to her, she’s still not finished.
“We fucked her,” Doc says lazily. “Front and back. She’s come about four times now. Squirted too.”
“Guys!” January whispers.
“Quiet, bella,” I tell her, wiping away the last of my orgasm. I address Adriano. “Something is happening between us and this girl. This is your chance to decide if you want to be a part of it.”
For a second Adriano merely stares, longing and disgust warring on his scarred face. Then he turns for the door. My chest contracts. After everything, this is how it ends.
“Wait!” January pushes away from me and gets to her feet. “They said it, Adriano! They all admitted they would have done exactly what you did.”
He paused. “They what?”
“They apologized. Or as good as. Doesn’t that change things? Doesn’t it make them better?”
Silence falls over the dining room. Even Doc doesn’t puncture it with whatever dumbass thing is running through his head. Adriano turns grey-faced, and uglier than I remember, scarred and insolent and stubborn as a mule. I find myself thinking of a night in Barcelona many years ago when a stranger shoved a broken bottle in my face. I was drunk and confused and before I could act Adriano appeared out of nowhere and put the guy’s lights out. He’d protected me before as a business partner, but that night he protected me as a brother. For no reason I could see other than that he wanted me to be safe.
“Come home,” I tell Rossi. “Or at least come and shower in the house, for fuck’s sake.”
A smile lifts one corner of Adriano’s mouth. “I’ll think about it.”
January smiles and so does Bobby.
Doc tosses the bottle of JB to his friend. “Come watch.”
“Why should he watch?” I say, sliding my hand down January’s back. “We’ve been taking Miss Whitehall’s virginity, Rossi. Would you like to finish?”
Adriano unscrews the cap of the JB and drinks long and deep. “Dunno.”
“I suppose I’m asking the wrong person. January, would you like to be fucked by Adriano Rossi?”
She trembles against my palm, goose bumps racing up her spine.
“You can’t see this,” I tell Adriano. “But she’s trembling for you.”
He makes a low, animalistic noise. The woods seem to have turned him wilder. Less human.
“I don’t know if she should,” Doc says slowly. “He’s fucking huge. There’s every chance he’ll ruin that pussy.”
I hadn’t considered this. Adriano is easily the most well-endowed out of all four of us. Seasoned whores have taken one look at him and refused their services. I glance at January and seem to see her slightness anew. Aside from her breasts and ass, she’s really quite tiny and her pale flesh is already covered in marks. “Bella, maybe you should just get on your knees for him? You’ve endured enough pain for one day.”
“Guys,” January says. “I don’t think…”
Adriano’s nostrils flare like an angry bull. “You’re offering me something you don’t want to give, Morelli? What a fucking surprise.”
“It’s not that we don’t want to give it,” Doc drawls. “We just don’t want you breaking our new toy.”
“At least not during her first time,” Bobby says. “JJ, maybe you can just jack him off?”
January dips her chin. “I—”
“What the fuck is your problem?” Adriano growls at Bobby and Doc. “I have as much of a right to take her as either of you.”
“Yeah but neither of us is going to murder with sex,” Doc retorts.
Adriano opens his mouth to say something, but Bobby beats him to it. “She’s already tender, Adri. You don’t want to hurt her, do you?
Adriano’s look of irritation collapses. He stares down at his feet. “No. Of course not. I’m sorry. Another time. Or maybe fucking never.”
He turns his back and heads for the door.
January shakes off my hand. “Adriano! Wait.”
He stops. “I want none of your sympathy, Pryntsesa. Anything but that.”
She takes a step toward him. “But I want to sleep with you.”
She’s flushing furiously as she says it, but her small chin is lifted in defiance. “I wanted to out by the water, but it seemed like you wanted to watch me instead.”
“What the fuck?” Doc laughs. “What happened out there?”
Everyone ignores him.
“I can do it,” January insists, a low throb in her voice. “I did ballet for ages, I’m really flexible—”
Doc gives a cracking laugh. “Holy shit she’s pitching for you Adri.”
January shoots him an icy glare before returning her gaze to Rossi. “Adriano… please can we just try?”
He shakes his shaggy head. “If this is about the money for your nanny’s daughters—”
“No.” She touches a hand to her bare breast, cupping the nipple. “I… want you. I wanted you when I thought you were a janitor. I didn’t understand because I didn’t know anything about men, but I really want us to be together. I want to know what it’s like to be yours.”
There are moments that bite into you and refuse to let go. Strange quotes. Peculiar scents. As I watched Adriano’s face change I knew I was witnessing such a moment. This cruel, half-dead man, realising that someone perfect and precious truly desires him. Adriano’s brutal mouth curves into a genuine smile, his scarred cheeks lift and his green eyes lighten and I understand now that some kind of sanity had been restored to him. A purpose.
“He loves her,” I mutter. “Jesu Christo and all the dead saints, he loves her.”
Adriano takes a step toward January, and she straightens in response. Two partners preparing to meet in a dance. He is hers now. Her loyal dog. A man whose sole purpose is to kill and die for one woman. The same one I have given my heart to.
But perhaps it was always going to end this way. The broken boys that fled to Italy together, never lived apart again. Couldn’t last more than a few days on our own, little as though any of us want to admit it. We became one family in trauma. Now January has united us, we might remain one family in love.
Adriano and January draw closer, warm, almost dazed expressions on their faces.
“Let the games begin,” Doc mutters, swigging from the JB bottle. “Ten bucks says she can’t walk after.”
“Are you sure this is what you want, Pryntsesa?” Adriano rumbles.
She manages to lift her chin to look at him. “Yes.”
I nudge her. “Go, bella. Give your soldier what he needs.”
She walks carefully toward him, as carefully as she walked up the aisle on her wedding day. When Adriano picks her up, he makes her look like a doll in comparison. He kisses her with so much tenderness I turn away, picking up the discarded champagne bottle and taking the seat beside Bobby’s.
He lies her back on the dining room table and climbs onto the wood, holding himself above her. “I’ll go slowly,” he promises. “I’ll go slowly and I’ll stop if you need me to.”
“I know you will,” January whispers, her hand closing around his shaft. Her small, pale fingers make it look like a boa constrictor, yet she guides it toward herself without a trace of fear.
Adriano sucks in a breath as the head kisses her wet entrance. “Pryntsesa, I don’t want to hurt you.”
January’s eyes slide closed. “I don’t care if you hurt me. Not this time.”
“But…”
“Shhh,” she whispers. “I want this so badly, Adriano.”
He tries to be gentle as he slides into her but January isn’t giving him the space. She arches into his cock, swallowing it as though she was born to take it all.
“Fucking Jesus.” Adriano grunts, his whole body is shaking with the effort to not ram inside her.
Then January’s face contorts. “God, it’s so much. Too much.” But she keeps grinding her hips upwards, urging Adriano’s shaft deeper still.
“How do you feel?” I call.
She lets out a breathy moan that sets my blood on fire. “It burns, but it feels so good.”
And just like that I’m as hard as I was before I came.
“Shit,” Doc mumbles, running a hand through his hair. “They look fucking hot together.”
They do.
The two of them, January and Adriano… it isn’t like it was with any of us. It’s erotic, almost romantic. Adriano keeps his mouth on January’s the whole time, his scarred arms holding her body tenderly to his. As he thrusts into her she sighs lushly, her hair flowing like a woman in a Raphaelite painting. At times the intimacy is almost painful, like watching the first man fuck the first woman, a marriage of the primal and the profound.
January moans like an angel when she comes and this time she seems entirely at home in the pleasure, turning her face upward and letting it wash over her in waves. “Oh my God, Adriano. Adriano, I don’t know if I can take it…”
“Move slowly, Pryntsesa. Feel how deep I am inside you. Feel how close we are.”
Beside me, Bobby wipes sweat off his forehead. “This is fucked up,” he whispers, and I silently agree.
“Of all the crazy shit I’ve seen,” Doc mumbles drunkenly. “I never thought it would be Adriano Rossi showing me up in the sex department.”
I silently agree again.
But Adriano and January don’t seem to hear us. They’re too wrapped up in each other, in the sensations of their own bodies.
“Pull out,” I warn Adriano as his thrusts grow faster and he groans in a way I recognize from a hundred other times, with a hundred other women. Adriano makes no motion that he’s heard me, and as he fucks January with determined, steady movements, I consider my next move. And as sexy as the scene has been to witness, I will not have January pregnant with a crazed, quarter-Italian bastard.
I consider pulling out the gun strapped to my ankle when Gretzky walks through the open door. “Mr. Morelli, Parker has agreed to a sit down with you in Manhattan next week—”
The room freezes—January impaled on Rossi’s cock, Adriano engulfing her with his mutilated body, Doc with the JB bottle between his teeth, Bobby palming the front of his briefs.
“This is a bad time, Gretzky,” I say, trying not to laugh. “Though good news about Parker.”
Our senior advisor’s face crumples like he’s about to have a stroke. “Shit-fire! Jesus!” he says, practically running away.
“We’re going to have to initiate a locked door policy,” I tell the others. “Starting immediately.”
January covers her face as Doc and Bobby laugh. Adriano looks like someone has pissed in his cornflakes.
“Cheer up,” I tell him, moving toward the door. “Keep fucking her. I’ll lock this then order Chinese.”
* * *
It’s six in the morning. The dining room is thick with cigar smoke and the scent of cold takeout, liquor and pussy. January is curled in my arms, sleeping. Doc is drinking contemplatively in the corner, probably imagining more perverted things to do to our girlfriend’s body and Bobby and Adriano are playing cards. I’m drunk, but not terribly. I mostly feel a strange sense of calm, as though there’s nothing in the world that needs worrying about.
“What the fuck are we doing?” Adriano says suddenly, turning to face me. “Things can’t go on like this with her.”
“Maybe not. But we’re making it up as we go along, Rossi.”
He growls but says nothing. I’m glad. I don’t want to discuss technicalities. I just want to bask in the glow of everything that’s happened tonight. Apparently, I’m not alone.
“I’m happy,” Doc says, lowering his whiskey bottle. “Happier than I’ve been in a long while.”
“That’s good,” I say.
“And I’ve decided… not to ruin everything.”
“What are you talking about?”
Doc sits up straighter in his chair. “Don’t freak, but I was gonna fly to Vegas and kill Parker before the contract was signed.”
I swirl my scotch. “We know.”
The look on Doc’s face is almost worth the ulcer he’s given me over the past week.
“What?!” he shouts.
“Be quiet! You’ll wake up January.”
“You didn’t know,” Doc hisses. “You had no idea about Vegas.”
I look at Bobby. “Apparently January Whitehall isn’t the only one who needs to be reminded that I know everything.”
Bobby smirks. “Yeah, I knew too.”
“So did I,” Adriano says, suppressing a yawn. “Even from the woods.”
Doc gets on his knees, almost tipping the chair over. “How? I didn’t tell anyone! I didn’t say shit! I was using my private server, I was—”
“Yourself,” I say. “And seeing as we’re your oldest friends who know exactly what you’re like, do you think maybe we’d guess you’d attempt to murder your way out of this, Domenico?”
“Well, shit…” Doc runs a hand through his hair looking about fifteen.
“You fucking idiota,” I say.
“What were you gonna do?” he asks. “Confront me about it before I left?”
“No. Sal and Gretzky were going to shoot you full of morphine and lock you in your bedroom.”
“The fuck!?”
I laugh. Bobby joins me and even Adriano gives a low, bull-like rumble.
“You fuckin’ assholes,” Doc sulks. “Well, whatever, I could have done it but now I’m not. Because I’m happy and I’m choosing not to.”
I want to call him a psychotic narcissist with the impulse control of a three-year-old but decide to take the high road instead. “I’m glad, my friend.”
“I was going to kidnap her,” Adriano says lightly.
We all turn to look at him.
“You what?” I demand.
“When I first came back to Velvet House. I thought about snatching January in her bed and heading for Mexico.”
“I was going to take her to Canada,” Bobby offers. “Ordered some fake passports and everything.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I despise all three of you.”
“And we hate you too,” Doc says, raising his bottle. “To a better ending.”
I lift my scotch and Bobby holds up his Stoli.
“A better ending,” we say.
Adriano holds up his beer. “An ending.”
The rising sun glows in the windows behind us. I watch it lift higher into the sky. Soon, we’ll sign the contract. What will a world without vengeance at the center even look like? Better, I imagine, because there’ll be a pretty girl there instead.
Doc shifts in his seat. “I’m fucking tired.”
“So go to bed.”
But he doesn’t move. “I should talk to January about Alessia.”
I glance at the others, but we don’t say anything. We know better.
“She’s been gone for years,” Doc slurs. “It’s like this old Polaroid. I can still see her but she’s fading. I forget stuff, confuse things she said with things I made up. But January’s alive. She’s in the world I live in. She fits.”
I remember her lying in my entrance hall in her wedding dress, surprising me as so few things do.
“She does fit,” I tell Doc. “She fits with all of us.”
“Yeah. I didn’t think I could love anyone after Alessia, but I was wrong. It’s why I’ll do the contract. I can’t die before I have a chance to really be with her. Or double stuff her with one of you assholes.” Doc presses a thumb into his eyelid, stamping away a tear. “And if Parker doesn’t get her and I fuck her every single night for the rest of our lives, maybe that’s enough revenge.”
The sun is higher now, its initial red glow dissolved into a clean brightness that only highlights the filthy dining room.
January shifts in my lap, her huge eyes blinking open. “What… what time is it?”
“Time for bed.” I glance at Bobby. “Take January to the East Wing. And keep your cock out of her, she needs rest.”
“I’m coming, too,” Doc announces as though he expects someone to stop him.
“Go,” I say. “I prefer to sleep alone.”
“I’m going back to the cabin,” Adriano says, draining his beer. “But I’ll be back later today to talk about the contract.”
“Good,” I say with relief. “We’ve missed you.”
Adriano looks at me like I’ve shaved my head. “You what?”
Doc claps him on the shoulder. “We missed you, you big idiot. Next time, don’t stay away so long.”
The four of us grin at one another, and I feel the words hovering. The ones we never say. Then Doc punches Adriano’s side and heads for the door. “Later, pussies. See you in bed, Bash.”
I watch, relieved and disappointed in equal measure. “Be in the secure room at noon. And don’t be fucking late.”
Doc gives me the finger.
I look down at January. She’s fallen asleep again, her black lashes stark against her ivory skin. Doc was right when he said I can’t control her, but how does anyone stand it? All I’ve ever had is girlfriends who danced on a string for me, but they couldn’t hold a candle to the stubborn girl curled in my lap like a kitten.
“Give her to me,” Bobby says quietly. “I’ll carry her upstairs.”
I let him take her, praying that whatever comes next, I will not lose her.